Take a haunted hike

So, you want to tell a spooky ghost story on your next hike and scare the gorp out of your friends? Or maybe you'd like to scare yourself, but don't know where to go for that spook factor?
Celebrate Halloween with a haunted hike on a haunted trail with the help of a haunted local trail guide.
Haunted Hikes by former National Park Service ranger Andrea Lankford recounts "spine tingling tales and tr...

There is an old cemetery in the forest of Harrison Bay SP. I once went by it at dusk, and there were about twenty hooded and robed figures in a circle amongst the gravestones. They all turned at me at me without saying word. To say that I "hastened" on my way would be an understatement.

The fall that my first kid was a baby I decided to go for a walk in the state arboretum in Augusta, Maine. It was my first visit and it was really pretty. The arboretum covers about 244 acres. I walked the outermost loop through the woods and saw virtually no one.

On the second half of my walk I came upon the remains of some buildings. From the signs I learned they were the piggery and nearby slaughterhouse and rending plant.

For many years, the residents of the state mental hospital, just across the road, worked the farm and piggery for therapy and exercise. The piggery burned down several times and then was discontinued. The mental hospital is still there.

I'm not one to get spooked in the woods, but standing next to the mental patients' burned-down piggery and slaughterhouse, all alone in the woods was a bit creepy.

All righty, as promised, here's what I see about Tennessee in the book above by Andrea Lankford:

Natchez Trace: This is where Meriwether Lewis committed suicide in an inn. He blew his forehead off with a gun and then mutilated himself with a razor (the innkeeper locked herself in her room). He died as a result (surprise!) and was buried near the inn, which is now on NPS land. Some say he haunts the area.

You can hike to his monument and grave on the Merriwether Lewis Loop.

Big South Fork NP: Oscar Blevins lived in a cabin near Bandy Creek. In 1975 the government condemned his cabin and included the land in the new national park. Blevins died in 1988, but supposedly has been seen since in the area, appearing and even speaking to rangers.

You can hike Oscar Blevins Farm Loop near Bandy Creek.

Great Smoky Mountains: Painfully shy kid Robert Palmer says he wants to grow up to be the Boogerman. He grew up to live in an isolated cabin and scare the dickens out of kids. Now the land and The Boogerman Loop trail is part of the national park.

I just got back from a trip on the A.T. and actually camped at the Slaughter camping area and then went up Blood Mountain the next day. These two places have a spooky past going back a long time: Spirit guides would help lost hunters on the Mountain; the name of the mountain actually came from a battle between two Native tribes that people said was so brutal that blood literally ran down the mountain, and Slaughter creek which is on the side of Blood Mountain comes from its own name sake; and in more recent time a serial killer actually decapitated several female hikers at the Blood Mountain shelter.

Alicia, odd enough I think I may have actually camped by the cabin in Big South Fork, that's kind of creepy.